Hodlnaut
Small crypto lending platforms offering 7%+ yields on stablecoins were all exposed to the same correlated risks.
Hodlnaut was a Crypto/Lending startup founded in 2019 in Singapore. It raised $40M before collapsing in 2022 — 3 years of runway burned. IdeaProof's AI Failure Score: 72/100, driven by terra/luna losses & fraud. The shutdown affected employees, investors, and the broader Crypto/Lending ecosystem. This case study breaks down the timeline, root causes, competitors that won, and replicable lessons for founders validating similar ideas today.
Why did Hodlnaut fail?
Hodlnaut failed in 2022 after 3 years of operation, losing $40M in raised capital. The root cause was terra/luna losses & fraud. Key lesson: Small crypto lending platforms offering 7%+ yields on stablecoins were all exposed to the same correlated risks.
2019 → 2022
$40M
Crypto/Lending
Singapore
IdeaProof AI Failure Score
Causal Chain
This is our reading of the causal chain — separated from the verifiable facts above. Timeline dates, funding numbers and filings are facts (see methodology); root / proximate / terminal attribution is judgement based on public evidence.
Governance and control failures — absent independent oversight, related-party transactions, or misrepresented financials — that made the entity unable to operate legitimately once exposed.
- Sector context: Crypto/Lending in Singapore, 3 years of runway.
2022: cessation of operations after failing to secure additional capital or a strategic buyer.
Base rates
A single failure is an anecdote. These base rates give you the denominator — how common this outcome is across all startups matching Hodlnaut's profile. Sources are third-party; we do not restate them as our own claims.
of failures involve prosecutable fraud, but these cases account for a disproportionate share of investor losses and media coverage.
IdeaProof analysis of court filings 2015–2024 (2024)of crypto/Web3 projects launched in the 2021 cycle were inactive or delisted within 24 months of peak market cap.
CoinGecko + Nansen dataset analysis (2023)of startups ultimately fail — including ~10% that fail in the first year and the rest across the following decade.
Startup Genome / CB Insights aggregate (2024)of new US employer businesses survive past their 10th year (Bureau of Labor Statistics BED series).
US Bureau of Labor Statistics — BED (2024)of Series A rounds ever graduate to Series B; the rest run out of runway or pivot without a follow-on.
CB Insights Venture Capital Funnel (2023)Full Analysis
Hodlnaut was a Singapore-based crypto lending platform that offered high yields on crypto deposits. The company lost $190M from exposure to Terra/Luna and 3AC. Co-founders were charged with fraud for allegedly hiding the losses from users while continuing to accept deposits. Platform was shut down and placed under judicial management.
Could This Failure Have Been Prevented?
IdeaProof's AI validates market demand, competitive positioning, and business model viability in minutes — catching the exact issues that sank Hodlnaut.
Related Failures
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Approved corrections are published in the public changelog with attribution.